Power of a Smile
by Kiraeon
Summary: An accident on Mount Silver leaves Red looking for something he doesn't know the name for. Green decides the best person to care for him is none other than the powerful Gym Leader in Saffron City. A late filled request for FFA.


_This one was a request from the boards, sorry it took so long to complete, hopefully you like it! Request was for Red x Sabrina, optional romance or cute, and so I deliver. Once again, definitely check out some of the fanfiction favorites in my profile- any and all of the fics done by those such as __**Lyra Kamiya**__ are wonderful, check out the group we're affiliated with for more excellent writers!_

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"_Help him; you're the only one who can."_

_**/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\**_

She was a woman of unimaginable Psychic power, a Master _of_ the Psychic type Pokemon and a well respected member of the Gym Leader community as well, she'd been doing the damned role since she was little older than when Red had arrived to challenge her at the age of eleven for his badge. She was a mentor, a guide and a teacher for those with psi-based abilities who needed help training them, honing them like a good Pokemon Trainer honed their team, or like a sword maker with his blades.

She was _not_ a therapist, a healer of spirits or anything like a mother.

Scarlet eyes monitored the bubbling contents of the pot carefully as her mind drifted back to the still-silent figure sitting on her couch. A careful brush of her mind against his resulted in an abnormal silence taking the place where a person's surface thoughts should have been. She considered the circumstances in which the younger boy had been dropped off in her care, and what little she could do at the moment without his consent.

A rare trainer of decent quality had managed to scale Mount Silver and challenge Red in the middle of his training. Things had been going rather well, from what Green had told her as he finished having Machamp bring in a couple of suitcases filled with what she suspected to be clothes, but had turned bad when Red's Espeon had tried to dodge an attack- ending up over the edge of the cliff.

According to the Viridian Gym Leader, Red was taking the accident more personally than he should be, especially when they'd just finished admitting the tiny Psychic Pokemon into the hospital there in Saffron right before they'd come over. A smart move, when it came to the health, mental and physical, of humans and Pokemon alike- there was simply no better place than Saffron City.

Then again, having her Gym be the hotspot for all kinds of Psychic activity, training and study probably had a lot to do with it as well- who better to figure out something than a Psychic? But with the eagerness to learn came with a price; if they wanted to learn how to control their powers, they had to follow the three simple rules her father had forced her to abide by.

The first, and most important rule, was to never use their powers for harm. Self-defense was something that Sabrina sent all of her trainees to learn over at the Fighting Dojo, her own private way of apologizing for the hostile take over a handful of years ago. The second was to never use their powers for profit or self-interest- and she had kicked out many a student who refused to abide by the strict code of honor she demanded of her pupils.

The third rule was the most important one, and the one her father had practically beaten into her with a sense of urgency she'd never been able to truly understand.

"It's finished."

Her voice broke the silence, startling Pikachu as the small rodent blinked up at her and flicked its ears back at her approach. "Pikaa..." He, she got the impression from its thoughts that it was male, shook his head as she set the bowl of soup down on the table. Permission given, though the electric mouse was still confused as to exactly what she was asking, she listened to his thoughts and feelings on his Trainer's condition. No change was about the gist of it, tinged heavily with worry and even a little bit of anger.

Upsetting your oldest partner and friend wasn't something a good trainer would do, though she was somewhat reluctant to advise Red of that fact in such a blunt manner.

She tossed the waist length black hair back over her shoulders, reaching out a hand for Pikachu to inspect. The only thing she could do for Red's Pokemon, other than feed them, was reassure them that everything would be alright in time and that their friend would be safe in her care.

Her Espeon looked up, a brush of another mind against her own signaling that her Pokemon had something to tell her. Sabrina nodded slightly, lowering her shields to allow the purple feline-like Pokemon to 'speak'. A flood of images and emotions entered her mind; another Espeon's fear burning brightly in its eyes the moment it realized it was going to fall, the worry that its trainer was going to be made at it for falling in the first place... and the moment of impact before all fell dark.

_:I should have known.:_ She thought at the violet eyed Pokemon watching her. _:Just behave yourself, your antics have brought quite a bit of trouble in the past- or do we need to revisit the Gallade situation again?:_

A wave of disgruntled acknowledgment came a few moments later. _:Will behave.:_ The purple eyes fell to Pikachu, and then looked to Red's supposedly sleeping form. _:Hurts.:_ The Daylight Pokemon's expression and thoughts took on concern for the male trainer.

If he was physically injured, she'd have already seen the bandages, or her Pokemon would have already alerted her to the problem. _:Yes. Emotional wounds.:_ The somewhat blank response gave the Psychic master a reason to remind herself that there was still a language barrier, even amongst the Psychic types like her Espeon. She gestured slightly, Red's Pikachu looking on in puzzled curiosity between the lavender colored Pokemon and the darkly dressed Trainer. _:Heart wound.:_ She clarified it for the sake of the Pokemon. Simplifying matters, using fewer human-like terms tended to make for easier communication.

Which was also why people whispered that she was a freak with her Pokemon, that she had some unnatural bond or power over them- or, the most absurd and insulting accusation of them all, that she _possessed_ their bodies and made them move however she liked.

Sabrina turned to the soup, dipped the spoon into it and held the steaming utensil carefully in hand. "Red." Her voice was a soft command, used to giving orders and having them obeyed without question. "You need to eat."

Red-brown eyes opened, blinking a couple of times before he silently pushed himself up to a sitting position and looked around, a brief flash of confusion lingered on his face. His gaze fell on a portrait of Sabrina and her father dated back to when she was a child, and then to another that showed the grand opening of the new Saffron City gym before returning to her. It took another moment or two, but recognition appeared and he nodded slightly to acknowledge he'd heard her.

"Do I need to feed you?" Sabrina's eyes took on what several had called a demonic light, glowing as she used her powers to drift the spoon between herself and the boy who'd sat dejectedly on her couch without moving for the past day and a half. He would need to move to take it, if he didn't, she would have to... and then carry through with feeding him like she had her Espeon so long ago.

Red shook his head once and sighed heavily as he slowly reached for the spoon.

_**\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/**_

It was now the fourth day since Green had dropped his 'best friend' off, and into her care.

"He eats and tends to his basic needs now, what more do you possibly expect from me?" Sabrina snapped into the receiver with a rare display of temper. Normally such displays were unacceptable from everyone- especially unacceptable from someone in as high an authority a position as herself- but, in this case, she was almost willing to make an exception to her rule.

Alakazam watched her from his position on her floor, his spoons hovering and casting an eerie white-blue glow over the dark room as he trained his mind. She shot him a disapproving frown when he made no effort to hide his amusement at her frustration. :_Not funny.:_ She told him, her voice short for her normally near-stoic and unruffled self. _:I have a sixteen, almost seventeen year old boy in my home with whom I am unable to communicate properly in _either_ way I know how to, his supposedly best friend on my phone constantly bothering me for 'updates' on his 'condition', and-:_

"You're a psychic, right? You're also a girl, so figure it out already and get him back to normal." Green retorted, drawing her attention away from the chastisement her Pokemon was receiving. She could see him quite clearly, the boy shoving his hands in his pockets with a tinge of frustration and anger in his movements. Pride, probably, as there was nothing _he_ could personally do for his friend, and relying on someone else was a bone stuck in his throat.

Sabrina hoped he choked on it.

"I may be female, but I am _not_ a replacement for a mother. If a mother's care is needed, return him to her and have _her_ nurse him back to health." Her tone took on a sharper edge. She wasn't typically good with people, and having the cocky Viridian Gym Leader's attitude thrown in her face on a nearly twice daily basis was starting to wear her down to a point where violating _all_ of her rules was starting to appeal to her.

"His mother hasn't seen him since he came home three years ago, and I'm not gonna bring him home like _this_." His tone went vicious, and guilty. "Look, you deal with difficult cases all the time, treat 'im like one of them and you should fix him quick enough that Lance won't figure out something happened and start poking his nose arou-."

"I am _not_ going to lie to the leader of the Elite Four and risk losing _my_ gym to cover your ass." She heard the sound of something clattering on the other end of the phone and a hailstorm of curses from Green. "Do I make myself clear, Green Oak? I have tolerated your unacceptable behavior for far longer than I should have and out of pity for your distress, and you insult Red as well for thinking he needs to be coddled to such an extent." At this point, whatever was happening on the other end of the phone had stopped, along with Green's swearing, and the furniture in her home was hovering about four inches above the cream colored carpet.

"I want you to listen _very_ carefully, Green, as I will only say this once," Sabrina's voice had gone cold again and she forced the boy on the other end of the phone to back up, advancing a table of some sort on him until he had his back pressed against the wall. "_you_ left Red in _my_ care. I will do what _I_ sense and feel is necessary, and prudent, to his recovery. If it includes Lance of the Elite Four's involvement, you will smile, _thank_ me profusely for my work and _cooperate without question_. Do I make myself clear?"

Clattering on the other end of the line suggested she'd lost control over the table and it had fallen harmlessly back to the ground. Small annoyance, but it meant she had a bit of a limit when it came to distance- and that was a pleasant discovery in its own right. For exactly two minutes and forty three seconds, the line was completely silent except for his breathing on the other line.

"So how's his Espeon doing, anyway?" Green asked, completely changing the subject on her in the way that sorely drove her towards giving into temptation. There _was_ that half-full bag of Pokemon food about sixty feet to his left whose contents she could pelt him mercilessly with...

She pinched the bridge of her nose carefully and counted to ten six times before giving her response.

After she'd hung up on him, she'd walked out to find the couch Red typically sat on still hovering, much to the delight of Espeon and Pikachu, who had taken to playing a game of duck-and-chase with it in the air. Pikachu's Trainer, however, was looking down at the inches of space between with something between amusement and surprise on his young face. When she'd entered the room, he looked up, cocking his head slightly in a way that reminded her of his Pikachu. Briefly, she wondered who had taken up the habit from the other and shook her head, trying to make sure her voice was as cold and steady as she'd had it before. "I lost my temper, I apologize."

Red looked down at the gap between his feet and the floor again, and back at her. For a moment, she had the bizarre sensation that _she_ was being measured and weighed against something she didn't have a name for. And, for the first time, a ghost-like smile formed on the sixteen year old's lips as he gave her a thumb's up.

_**/\/\/\/\/\/\**_

Red's Espeon pulled through somewhere around day ten of Red's stay, though it had been a much closer call than even Sabrina had been comfortable with. The price had been high for the survival, especially after the infection in Espeon's leg had eaten the muscle down to the bone and required the limb to be amputated, lest it spread further in the body. She had been escorted Red there every day for the whole last week of the Pokemon's hospital stay to work with the Psychic type's physical therapy and help it learn how to run on three legs, instead of the four it had gone unconscious with.

Her Espeon had taken to being something of a nurse, and was working with Red's to get him back up to battling form. How, she wasn't sure, the two would often disappear when she or Red weren't looking and come back looking like they'd been through quite the little adventure through the city- or just outside of it.

Alakazam seemed amused by the entire situation and often told her such- especially when he'd caught her Espeon snuggling in with Red's after a particularly brutal 'training' bout that left her ear notched in three distinctive places from the claws and fangs of the other. Her childhood friend had merely slipped away from the scene, showing her the image he'd found and didn't have any other opinion on the matter; much to her annoyance.

Red, on the other hand...

The boy with eyes the color of cinnamon had taken up the annoying habit of watching her with a look that bordered between a longing of some sort, and sadness. The look particularly intensified whenever she sat with his Espeon in her lap and groomed him the same way she did with her own, or when Espeon dropped her favorite doll in her lap and snuggled up to the both of them.

"Is there something you need?" The red eyed woman asked finally, finished with waiting for him to approach her and ask whatever it was he wanted from her. A combination of that and she was getting highly sick and tired of just being stared at. It made her itch after a while and put her decidedly toward the more cranky end of the emotional spectrum.

Damn, but if it weren't tempting beyond belief at the moment though to break her vow to her father and just read the boy's mind. She'd never even heard so much as a "No." out of the young man since he'd been there.

Which, according to Green, was perfectly normal.

Red nodded at her question, much to her surprise as she folded the corner of a page down and closed the book she'd been reading up until that point. Now he had her undivided attention, and she figured he'd probably take a seat next to her within the next couple of minutes.

When he just stood there, looking at her and didn't say anything further, Sabrina wondered if he was waiting for her to speak with him telepathically- if he just wasn't sure what he wanted. It was the brief flash of frustration and slide of his eyes away from her that clued her in on something she probably should have thought of. "You're not sure how to ask for it, is that correct?"

Relief mixed with a slightly miserable embarrassment flashed across his face as, again, he nodded to confirm that what she was saying was true.

She considered her options carefully, and decided the only way to get any of this resolved was to have him show her if he wasn't going to speak. "Alright," Sabrina said after a long, awkward feeling silence that made the boy opposite of her uncomfortable. "show me what you need."

**/\/\/\/\**

_:Do you feel better?: _Sabrina asked quietly, softly running her hand through his messy hair. The twenty year old Gym Leader had sensed him waking about ten minutes ago and had done her best to be a good pillow for his head for the last several hours. _Good thing I'm used to sustaining this position for several hours._ She glanced down at the boy currently staring up at her face from her lap.

_:Yeah. Green's gonna call me a crybaby again though.:_ There was a long, sheepish pause as he gave her kind of a half-smile. _:Sorry, I'm not a very cool Champion.:_

Sabrina made a dismissive sound, her hand dropping from his hair and back to the ground as he shifted, moving just a little closer. _:I beg to differ.: _The dark haired beauty didn't bother elaborating any further. As she learned more from Red's musings on his 'best friend', the more she was inclined to dislike the cocky upstart and his treatment of the boy currently snuggling close to her. Since he'd given permission for her to be in his head, she was quick to analyze his mental and emotional state to see if there was anything further shadowing his heart.

Five years was a long time to hold so much inside, and she had told him such on the spot in between the times when he'd pulled his cap down to hide his eyes and had turned his head away. A slight shake every so often coupled with a dampness that spotted her pants was more than she needed to know. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk, quite the opposite actually; it was the damn stammer and tripping over his words that had eventually forced him to decide keeping quiet would be better than trying to talk at all.

Basically, his mouth couldn't keep up with his thoughts, and everything came out a mess when he tried to. Green's merciless teasing during their childhood had given him a complex about it, so he'd gradually said less and less over the years, until he'd found himself almost forgetting to speak at all.

Which put Sabrina back into the mindset of wanting to do something to punish the boy's childhood friend for _making_ everything so damned difficult to begin with. Janine would probably let her borrow some of the Ariados she kept as pets, dig a big enough pit and fill it with Spinarak and its evolution and slowly lower the boy in until he begged for mercy and forgiveness. Although, turning him into a doll like she'd done when she was a small child with boy who'd pulled Erika's hair and called her a frog had its appeal as well. Especially if she showcased him for an evening in something truly revolting in style and color that would be sure to embarrass him for many years down the line...

_:...you know, you're really pretty when you smile. You should do that more.:_ Red's voice broke into her thoughts and she started, blinking down at him in confusion at the comment. Smile? She didn't smile, or rather, _rarely_ smiled. Probably about as much as Red admitted to talking instead of gesturing or shrugging.

The devilishly child-like grin, the same one he'd shown her when he'd challenged her to a match five years or so ago appeared. _:You're smiling right now, it looks nice.:_ He reached up, taking liberties with the Psychic trainer's personal space and gently traced her lips with his thumb. _:See? You're smiling, I felt it.:_

The two of them stared at one another, Red struggling to figure out how to ask one of the questions he'd been wanting to ever since he'd defeated her at her Gym that day, long, long ago, and Sabrina trying to come to terms with the fact that all the staring, all the looks he'd given her- as well as why he'd been dumped off on _her_ after Espeon's accident- were for a very... very... normal reason.

...he _liked_ her.

He'd wanted to get even stronger after her defeat, admiring how 'cool' she was, and that she was the kind of trainer he wanted to be like when he got older. Had wanted to come back and impress her even more than he thought she'd been- and correctly assumed- when he'd defeated her.

He liked her blunt, oft tactless criticism, her way of speaking and her sometimes cruel honesty. He liked how she wanted to keep herself in complete control- and wanted to see her lose more of it, because floating on that couch had been about the coolest thing he'd ever had happen to him.

And... he had wanted to come see her since he'd dropped off Espeon at the Pokemon center after the emergency, to ask her if there was anything special he could do for the Psychic type to help him heal faster. Instead, he'd found himself at a bigger loss than usual, that her calm nature had helped him quit hiding from his shock... and let him just be himself, and grieve over what he'd perceived as a massive failure as a Trainer, and a friend, on his part.

"...sorry." He apologized in a rough voice, slightly hoarse from disuse as he pushed himself up on to his elbows and looked into her eyes. Before she could say anything, Red, the great Champion of the Kanto Region, of the Elite Four and the youth considered to be _the_ greatest Pokemon Trainer on record... leaned up and clumsily kissed one of the most intimidating women he'd ever met in his life.

He'd waited a long, long time to see her again... and she'd still managed to catch him when he was 'weak' and 'uncool', as his thoughts continued to indicate.

She had a few choices she could make, one needing to be made right now before the boy lost his nerve and took off running, thinking he had to conquer that damn mountain again in order to hopefully impress her. Boys and their stupid ideas, honestly, she thought to herself with an internal sigh. Looks like he would need to stay under her care- just long enough to make sure he knew, and felt, that he was strong enough to return to his old life again.

_:...there is no need to apologize,:_ The black haired woman told him finally, after he'd drawn back and seemed to wait for punishment of some sort. She wasn't good with people, she'd emphasized that fact and Red had chosen to ignore it anyways... just like the boy she'd seen through her visions as he grew up and overcame one challenge after another. The same boy who had conquered her Gym, the Elite Four and then the treacherous Mount Silver. Sabrina reached out and deftly moved some of the strands falling into his eyes, allowing her hand to slide slowly to his cheek, and kissed him in return.

She smiled afterward, allowing him to pretend he was the older one for a little while and rested her head on his chest as he let his thoughts drift. Her Espeon, and Red's as well, had sneaked their way over to join the two of them, as had Pikachu, in the odd little pile on her living room carpet.

It was strange, what the power of a simple smile could do.

Perhaps Red was right, she would have to try and smile a little more often... and see what kind of future that would bring the two of them in the end.


End file.
